A former aide of George W. Bush has today stated that Twitter should be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize because of the part it played during last month’s civil unrest in Iran. The prize is awarded for the demonstration of “fraternity between nations” and “holding the promotion of peace”, two areas Mr Pfeifle believes Twitter showed during the crisis.
He goes on to state that Twitter “became the assignment desk, the reporter, and the producer” after journalists were forced to flee the country. This is a point worth debating over as yes; some Twitter users were indeed posting about their accounts of the election and the state of the country, but some users may have been ‘tweeting’ propaganda or bias opinions about the crisis or some posts from users outside of the country might have been criticizing the aspects of the crisis. Due to the fact that Twitter is so freely available and open to so many people the chances of every single post about Iran being peaceful is very un-likely.
Nothing can be taken away from Twitter about the amazing platform that it served during then Iranian elections, as Pfeifle explains, “Without Twitter, the world might have known little more than a losing candidate accusing the powers that be of alleged fraud. Without Twitter, the people of Iran would not have felt empowered and confident to stand up for freedom and democracy.” Other social media also played a role during the crisis as videos were constantly being uploaded to YouTube and a Facebook fan page allowed Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi to gain a following of over 100,000. With this being the case surely it would make more sense to consider social media as a whole for the prize, rather then just one aspect of it. We will however have to wait till 9th October 2009 to see if Pfeifle’s views will have any impact on the decision of the Nobel Peace Prize nominators